Protect your Business with these Active Directory Security Best Practices

information_security_blog
Every organization's information security teams safeguard AD because it is required for a variety of vulnerable functions such as network access, credentialing, and authentication. In addition, every time users, applications, IoT devices, and other critical network connections connect to an enterprise's systems, they require AD. Knowing this fact, hackers always target an active directory. Therefore, businesses must adhere to active directory best practises.

The 2018 healthcare.gov hack is one example of a severe AD breach. Using stolen credentials, attackers could access the database and expose over 75,000 files containing personal data (PII).

Another example is how hackers breached Virgin Mobile's office network in Saudi Arabia, gaining access to the company's email system and Active Directory domain controller, and selling stolen data on private dark web forums.

Semperis, a pioneer in identity-driven cyber resilience for businesses, conducted a survey on cyber disasters and found the following:

  • 84% of organizations consider that impact of an Active Directory attack can jeopardize businesses.
  • 97% of organizations believe that AD is mission-critical.

In this article, we will discuss a few critical Active Directory Security best practises that businesses should follow to strengthen their defences against cyberattacks and fraud.


Role of Active Directory Security in Cyber Attacks

An Active Directory security strategy that is proactive and dynamic but is not prioritized can have severe consequences. Active Directory is a significant target for cybersecurity hackers because it centralizes user access and authorization across all company levels. Once inside the system, cyberattackers have the ability to raise their privileges on a regular basis, granting them access to a wide range of network resources. One security breach in Active Directory can therefore put a company's entire digital infrastructure at risk, allowing hackers to steal sensitive data from all user accounts, databases and apps.


What are Best Practices for Active Directory Security?

Security experts have developed a set of best practices to combat the numerous flaws and exploits that can be used to gain access to Active Directory. Let us look into some of them.


Maintain an Inventory

You must know everything there is to know about an AD to keep it clean and secure. Therefore, you should document naming standards and critical security regulations in addition to every user, service account, machine, and access group.

A detailed, comprehensive inventory of your entire system is the most effective active directory security strategy for adhering to the highest standards of AD cybersecurity. Identifying and categorizing all of the computers, devices, users, domains, and name conventions for your organisational units should be among your top priorities.


Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

  • MFA blocks more than 99.9 percent of account compromise attacks.

According to Microsoft, “You can help prevent some of these attacks by banning the use of bad passwords, blocking legacy authentication, and training employees on phishing. However, one of the best things you can do is to just turn on MFA.”

Multi-factor authentication is another critical active directory best practise that organizations should follow. Hackers can easily access remote users' computers, often without their knowledge. Using multi-factor authentication (MFA), companies can protect remote devices effectively. Before granting access to an MFA solution, a user must pass two or more verifications successfully. This effectively blocks hackers from gaining access to active directories.

The current multi-factor authentication methods include push notification, one-time password, email/SMS code, two-factor token, and biometrics. The following data illustrates how organizations fare with multi-factor authentication.

  • Only 26% organizations use multi-factor authentication.
  • With 68% of use, mobile push notifications are the most common authentication method.


Establish a Strong Password Policy

Enforcing a strong password policy is another critical best practise for active directory security. AD should be able to force users to change their passwords on a regular basis.

Password policy can be used to improve network security by imposing stricter account lockout settings on privileged accounts. If users who have access to sensitive data and applications are locked out of their accounts, they will face a more involved authentication process.


Limit Access to a Privileged Group


"Practice the principle of least privilege. Do not log into a computer with administrator rights unless you must do so to perform specific tasks. Running your computer as an administrator (or as a Power User in Windows) leaves your computer vulnerable to security risks and exploits. Simply visiting an unfamiliar Internet site with these high-privilege accounts can cause extreme damage to your computer, such as reformatting your hard drive, deleting all your files, and creating a new user account with administrative access." 

- Indiana University (Best practices for computer security)

Employee levels define the level of access an employee requires to perform their job. Access to Active Directory should be restricted to employees who require it to perform their jobs properly. Complete access is provided to domain administrators and other privileged groups.

Limiting AD access to a privileged group is an excellent active directory security best practice to avoid frauds and safeguard your business.


Educate Your Employees

One of the main challenges of ensuring cybersecurity is that most employees are unaware of the vulnerabilities. Therefore, businesses must educate employees about the risks associated with gaining access to Active Directory and other official business accounts. As a result, cybersecurity is everyone's responsibility, not just the IT team.

Summing Up

Active Directory is the most vulnerable document in a company because it contains sensitive information that can put organisations at risk. Because of this, it is the responsibility of every employee to investigate and stay protected. Top IT management has to ensure everyone follows the cybersecurity policies within the company monitoring it regularly, especially the active directory best practices set within the company.


Frequently Asked Questions


Why is it essential to protect your Active Directory?

If a cyber-attacker gains access to your Active Directory, they will have access to your entire connected database, user accounts, all kinds of information, and applications. This could put your business at risk.


Can active directories be hacked?

Yes, active directories can be easily hacked. Recent cyberattacks have frequently targeted enterprises' active directories, which manage thousands of computers and user accounts.

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Trellix | January 22, 2024

Trellix, the cybersecurity company delivering the future of extended detection and response (XDR), today announced an expanded strategic partnership with One Source, a Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP) and technology delivery partner. Customers benefit from a Fortune 500 SOC capability built on the Trellix XDR Platform with AI-guided intelligence, enabling faster detection, investigation, and remediation. Trellix, the cybersecurity company delivering the future of extended detection and response (XDR), today announced an expanded strategic partnership with One Source, a Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP) and technology delivery partner. Customers benefit from a Fortune 500 SOC capability built on the Trellix XDR Platform with AI-guided intelligence, enabling faster detection, investigation, and remediation. “The partnership aligns with Trellix’s ongoing commitment to secure organizations from advanced cyber threats,” says Sean Morton, SVP of Professional Services at Trellix. “Leveraging One Source’s MDR capabilities and expanded footprint, we enable more businesses to build cyber resilience, with continued innovation in our combined products and solution offerings to stay ahead of bad actors.” One Source has multiple SOCs leveraging Trellix’s technology, staffed by the industry’s top experts to provide Managed Detection and Response (MDR) capabilities. Their team implements a proactive cyber strategy for customers specific to industry, technology environment, and vulnerabilities, built on the Trellix XDR Platform with 24x7 monitoring. The partnership and combined expertise benefits customers with enhanced services like managed threat detection and response, incident response, security operations and analytics, threat intelligence, threat hunting and forensics, and training and enablement. “The Trellix and One Source partnership is extremely powerful; the former offers an incredible set of security solutions, and the latter excels at personalized deployment and execution,” said Paul Moline, Chief Information Officer, Lindsay Automotive Group. “I never anticipated we could protect our environment with the same security solutions used by government agencies and Fortune 50 companies: I can now sleep at night.” The Trellix XDR Platform’s open architecture and broad set of native security controls across endpoint, email, network, cloud, and data security integrates with over 500 third-party tools to create multi-vector, multi-vendor event correlation and context to speed up investigations. The Trellix Advanced Research Center provides an additional layer of protection by continuously informing the platform with information from millions of global sensors on the latest threat vectors, tactics, and recommendations. One Source experts apply these insights to stay ahead of the constantly evolving threat landscape. “The collaboration with Trellix is a game-changer in reshaping the cybersecurity landscape,” says Eric Gressel, Executive Vice President of Sales, One Source. “Thanks to our partnership, we have access to the highest level of cyber intelligence to fend off newly-revealed hackers and their means of attack, enabling our customers with the most comprehensive offering of enhanced Managed Security Services to protect their businesses.” One Source has a proven track record supporting global businesses spanning retail, restaurant, automotive, healthcare, financial, and manufacturing industries. Trellix customers can rely on One Source's leading Managed Security Services to optimize technology expenses while enhancing telecom connectivity, IT infrastructure, and cybersecurity strategies. About Trellix Trellix is a global company redefining the future of cybersecurity and soulful work. The company’s open and native extended detection and response (XDR) platform helps organizations confronted by today’s most advanced threats gain confidence in the protection and resilience of their operations. Trellix, along with an extensive partner ecosystem, accelerates technology innovation through machine learning and automation to empower over 40,000 business and government customers with living security. More at https://trellix.com. About One Source One Source helps businesses simplify a complex technology world. One Source is the leading provider of Technology and Managed Security Services for enterprises. Today, One Source manages more than 2,500 customers, 45,000 business locations, and over one million assets throughout North America. In addition to Managed Security Services, One Source provides Managed Technology Expense Management, 24 / 7 local helpdesk, procures and provisions telecom & IT solutions, and manages customer service requests. One Source frequently generates triple-digit ROI for customers through contract negotiation, portfolio optimization, and ongoing expense management. In addition, One Source leverages partnerships with industry leaders, including Trellix to bring Fortune 500 security solutions and fully managed services to the mid-market. One Source's approach empowers businesses to focus on customers and revenue-generating activities. Learn more at https://www.onesource.net/.

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Platform Security

Stellar Cyber and Proofpoint Strategic Alliance to Deliver Comprehensive Email Security Solution For SecOps Teams

Stellar Cyber | January 23, 2024

Stellar Cyber, the innovator of Open XDR, announced a new partnership with Proofpoint, a leading cybersecurity and compliance company. Through this alliance, Proofpoint and Stellar Cyber customers benefit from an out-of-the-box integration enabling swift email investigations and real-time response actions to email-driven attacks. Proofpoint Targeted Attack Protection monitors emails to identify suspicious emails and potentially malicious attachments and URLs. Once identified, the findings are shared with Stellar Cyber automatically. Stellar Cyber’s Open XDR platform ingests, normalizes, and analyzes Proofpoint findings and other collected data to deliver a comprehensive threat picture. As security analysts conduct investigations, they can instruct integrated third-party products – including Proofpoint – on corrective actions. “Protecting organizations against email-borne attacks is a top priority, and security teams need a way to automatically correlate threat telemetry across the entire attack surface in order to quickly remediate threats,” said Andrew Homer, VP of Strategic Alliances, Stellar Cyber. “This new partnership with Proofpoint is the latest example of Stellar Cyber delivering on its Open XDR strategy to provide customers turn-key integrations that improve productivity and threat detection.” “Email attacks remain the number one entry point into an organization, and the level of sophistication of these attacks continues to grow exponentially,” said D.J. Long, Vice President, Strategic Alliances & Business Development, Proofpoint. “We’re thrilled to work with Stellar Cyber on this strategic alliance to help customers protect against advanced email-based threats and unify their cybersecurity defense.” Through this alliance, Stellar Cyber and Proofpoint give security teams an advantage over attackers, resulting in the following: Real-time threat signals exchanged for proactive detection Correlation of Proofpoint alerts across the entire attack surface Automated response actions for immediate threat containment About Stellar Cyber Stellar Cyber’s Open XDR Platform delivers comprehensive, unified security without complexity, empowering lean security teams of any skill level to secure their environments successfully. With Stellar Cyber, organizations reduce risk with early and precise identification and remediation of threats while slashing costs, retaining investments in existing tools, and improving analyst productivity, delivering an 8X improvement in MTTD and a 20X improvement in MTTR. The company is based in Silicon Valley.

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